Need Help: Migrating Email Filters & Settings from Thunderbird to Betterbird

SEE UPDATE BELOW - STILL NOT WORKING

After learning about Betterbird's superior features, I was eager to test it out. To my surprise, the transition from Thunderbird required manual transfer of settings, which was unexpected since I didn't find an automatic import option for my email accounts. Dealing with five separate email accounts for my businesses, I assumed that email filters would automatically carry over.

Unfortunately, despite manually moving my settings, the email filters didn't follow suit, and I haven't found any guidance on whether this is feasible. Given that Thunderbird and Betterbird are built on the same foundation, it baffles me that there isn't a simple import function for all existing settings and filters from an updated Thunderbird installation.

Without this capability, I'm at a crossroads. Thunderbird's bugs are manageable, but the absence of an easy import for my extensive list of filters is a significant obstacle. I am reaching out for any help or insights that could facilitate this transition. The move to Betterbird interests me, but it hinges on the platform's ability to fully integrate my existing settings, filters, and more.

P.S. I’ve also noticed that my email signatures haven't transferred over. While this might be a minor issue compared to the others, it adds to my hesitation. The prospect of switching is becoming increasingly unattractive without these core functionalities.

UPDATE:

1. I'm running the TB Beta and I have several TB profiles when I go to IMPORT

2. When I first posted this, I imported the incorrect profile and that would explain no FILTERS importing I guess but as soon as I setup an account, I begin building filters SO....I guess maybe it doesn't make sense.

3. In any case, I switched to the "default-beta" profile found at: C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\v23vn66u. default-beta

   1. Did the import again and this time, it did ask me for password for the accounts that weren't Gmail but FILTERS HAVE NOT IMPORTED???

   2. As a last ditch attempt to get this working, I uninstalled and reinstalled and I've gone through the IMPORT AGAIN......and still....NO FILTERS????

I really do want to give Betterbird a FAIR chance but I need these issues fixed or a resolution found before I can make a switch. ANY HELP WOULD BE GREAT!!!

Regards,

David

I would like to try Betterbird. The Betterbird website says that it is very easy to test, as Betterbird can directly use (not import) the Thunderbird profile. "You can install Betterbird at the same time as Thunderbird and run them on the same profile."
Unfortunately, I can't make it work.

I run Tuxedo Linux and have Thunderbird installed as a deb-package (not Flatpack). On the Betterbird Website I can download a linux archive and directly start betterbird (I just doubleclick on the betterbird.bin file in the folder I unpacked the archive in). Or I can install it as a flatpack using discover. In both cases Betterbird asks me to setup my e-mail account and does not find / use / recognize an existing Thunderbird profile.

The Betterbird support page (https://www.betterbird.eu/support/#switch-tb-bb) mentions something how to switch between the two but I don't know what to do here.

Does anybody have experience how to make Betterbird use my existing Thunderbird profile. I assume that I somehow have to tell Betterbird where to find my Thunderbird profile. However, I don't know how and I don't even know where my Thunderbird profile is stored...

I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks.

I just learned about Betterbird and wanted to try it. It did not find my existing Thunderbird profile, so I used -p -purgecaches to select the existing profile and got the error message shown in the image. Version is 128.9.2esr-bb25 (64-bit) and it says it is up to date. What have I missed?

i started getting this 'Your gmail settings are out of date' message but i could not figure out what settings they were talking about or the way to fix them. and Thunderbird just kind of ground to a halt. tried Betterbird and its the same story.

what do i do and how do i do it? i have 7 active emails and it's killing me.

thanks to all in this community, you guys are great.

I have been using and LIKING Betterbird for the best part of this year and would like to rid my machine of all things "Thunderbird"--however I find that BB uses the .thunderbird configuration folder.

I tried copying the contents of same to a .betterbird folder, and re-configured the Account Settings Local Folder to my new folder--that worked, but I found on restart BB recreated the ,thunderbird folder and repopulated it with a few files.

Deleting that caused BB to behave as if it were a new install?

I restored the .thunderbird folder from the backup I made before mucking about, and re-configured the BB Local Folder setting, and all is well. however my question is does BB need to have that .thunderbird folder to run properly?

Can I change that behaviour?

Is it safe to delete the 12GB Thunderbird folder located in AppData>Roaming?

Or does Betterbird share the same resource?

Thanks in advance :)

Just completed a net install and there’s one issue preventing me from keeping it unless there’s a fix. Because of work I need notifications for new email. Since Birdtray hasn’t worked with Thunderbird for months I thought I could overcome this by using the Flatpak version of Betterbird which has a new mail notification by default. Everything works as expected including the new mail notification icon but then I discovered it’s not possible to add attachments to any outgoing emails (my two are Gmail and GMX mail). Anyone got any suggestions please either to get attachments working for Betterbird or a mail notification for Thunderbird.

So, per the heading, I;ve been using Thunderbird for a while now, and I'd like to try Betterbird to see if it is genuinely better. I'm a FOMO person - forgive me.

Thunderbird is installed and working pretty well, even with MS Exchange servers (using OWL) which is a big plus for me.

The instructions seem to indicate that I can simply install Betterbird (which I have done using the Flatpak version) and then copy my Thunderbird config to replace the Betterbird config.

I found both configs under ~/.var/app so I renamed the new (untouched) Betterbird config and replaced it with my old Thunderbird config, using the commands below:

cd ~/.var/app
mv eu.betterbird.Betterbird/ eu.betterbird.Betterbird-new
cp -r net.thunderbird.Thunderbird/ eu.betterbird.Betterbird

Yet when I start Betterbird it acts as if it was a new installation, asking me to configure the first e-mail address.

I'm sure I'm doing something dumb, but what is it?

EDIT: I've just found a Betterbird directory at:

/var/lib/flatpak/app/eu.betterbird.Betterbird/x86_64/stable/93b6ddc26f7b6f2371c6be1b04855f183d912554a613b8ef7a7f02ca45668122/files/lib/betterbird

Which is probably the one I want to patch (since it's presumably the Flatpak instance). Trouble is, there doesn't seem to be config dir, anywhere in the vicinity.

I installed Betterbird, and made a copy of my Thunderbird profile so I could test it without mucking up Thunderbird.

When I try to open the copy of the profile, I get this message:

A newer version of Betterbird may have made changes to your profile which are no longer compatible with this older version. Use this profile only with that newer version, or create a new profile for this installation of Betterbird. Creating a new profile requires setting up your accounts, calendars and add-ons again.

I looked and am running a newer version of TB, than BB. TB...128.4.1esr, BB...115.17.0-bb35

What can I try at this point?

Do I have to just stop updating TB and wait until BB gets caught up?

I just switched to Betterbird from Thunderbird and and EXTREMELY SATISFIED!! Everything seemed to come in great since I have an IMAP with Google account. But I noticed my Thunderbird Message filters did not transfer over, understandably. I am not sure if I want to import those filters since I had Thunderbird for probably 15 years, and there are a TON of filters. I see in Thunderbird there are also numerous profiles, each having their own message filters. If I decided to copy the message filter data over to BetterBird, should I combine all my data from 3 different profiles into one data file? And I am assuming I would just put my 'msgFilterRules.dat' file into my new Betterbird profile, correct?

When I open TB (actually Betterbird, on Windows) by double-clicking from my desktop, my profile opens just fine. But when I try to open a .ics file by double-clicking, I get an error "Your Betterbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I get the same thing if I use "open with..." and choose the exact same .exe file that the BB shortcut points to. So how does the app decide what profile it should be using?

I expect this is related to the problem I posted about a week ago, where every time I install an update, it creates a new profile for me, so I have to manually empty out that new profile and move all my data out of the previous profile and into the new one.

I have been banging my head against this all morning. I have a new computer with Windows 11. My old computer runs Windows 7 ( yes, I know...). I followed the instructions on both here and Mozilla's website. I installed Thunderbird on my new computer and found where the Profiles folder is. I then copied my xxxx.default file from my old computer to my new computer, using an external hard drive. Started up Thunderbird and it brought the startup wizard. There were no emails & no settings transferred over. So then I thought, well maybe I forgot to close down the old Thunderbird before I copied to the external hard-drive. I made sure TB was closed on my old computer before re-copying xxxx.default to the external hard drive. While that was copying, I uninstalled TB on the new computer. I re-installed TB on the new computer. Now, on the new computer, when I try to load TB, it says "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible". I even tried to uninstall and redownload TB and I still get that my new version cannot be loaded. Can anyone help me figure this out? Thanks so much in advance.

Oh - On my old computer, I have TB version 115.10.1 If that makes any difference.

I am posting this a second time because I really need to fix this. You can see from the screenshot that all I get in account settings are the headings but no actual settings. The Error Console is empty. If I uninstall and reinstall will that fix it? If not, and the problem is in the user profile, how would I fix that? I really need to fix this. Can anyone help please?

How do I get to it to set the icons to icons and text like in TB?

I'm not sure what to set in Advanced settings or if there is some other workflow.

I'm so pissed off. I'm using Thunderbird for more than 15 years, but lately it's an infinite mess. I don't like the new interface and the way thunderbird merging my mails in "groups". I respect that some users could like it but we should have the choice at installation.

I spend some time on each install to remove all the crappy bars everywhere, showing the main bar on top "file, edit, ...", stoping it to merging my mails, but it's not the worst part...

Thunderbird is silently updated, and sometimes, when I launch my computer, my settings are gone !!! This is incredible ! This evening, the main bar disappeared and the mails are one more time merged by "discussions". I just want to use my mailbox the way I intend to use it and don't spend my whole evening finding which options I should check to find my old UI, why resetting the users setting when a silent update occurs ???

Thunderbird was a very pleasant software to use but I'm done with this shit. What a waste....

Firefox is still usable and I really hope it won't go the same path

Sorry for my poor english, I'm sooo disappointed... I can't believe such poor choices we made.

Hello, I have been using Thunderbird for 5 months within the company I work for and I have encountered several problems:

1. If I send an email from Thunderbird to Yahoo Mail, it goes directly to the recipient's spam folder.

2. I do not receive emails, I am told that emails have been sent to me, but I do not receive them, and often it happens that on the director's computer the email appears in the Office mailbox, while on the computer I work on it does not appear.

3. Emails are deleted without me selecting them to be deleted after a period of time.

4. There are times when I try to send emails from my personal Gmail account to my work email, and sometimes they can be sent, but other times I get an error message.

5. The director tried to add his work email to Gmail but cannot access old emails.

Do you have any solutions or explanations for any of these problems?

I've been using the app for many years, maybe more than 10 (!?). I'm using Linux (Nobara Project/Fedora fork), MacOS (macbook mid'2013) and Windows 10 at home. There is also my work laptop that also runs Windows 10.

Still haven't found a way to sync settings/options/preferences between computer.s You just sync the profile folder and get all the email files along with it. Everybody knows that this process may produce a rar/zip/gzip file larger than 20gb that is difficult to sync thru shared ftp, google/onedrive/etc. Some guys just transfer it using a usb stick or even only use portable version (windows only).

I'm searching for a way to "only" sync "settings/options/preferences" between computers, without sync'ing the emails. I use more than 5 accounts all set'ed up with IMAP, even matrix.

I'm hoping this post reaches people that figured it out and not users that just reply "use this guide that does sync the whole bunch" just for an upvote.

I switched to Betterbird (115.13) recently.
Maybe a coincident or maybe a bug?

Betterbird is running. When I click on a mailto URL on a website I got a "Thunderbird is already running, but is not responding. The old Thunderbird process must be closed to open a new window." error.
The same happens in safe mode.

When Betterbird is not running, the click on the mailto URL will open a Betterbird window to write an e-mail as expected.